The Grimm Curse (Once Upon A Time Is Now)

by Stephen Carpenter

  “Yes, I was going to prepare something for the vigil,” Rachel said.

  Sheriff Cord stared blankly at her.

  “The candlelight vigil tonight?” Rachel said. “For the Peyton twins?”

  “Oh, yeah,” the sheriff nodded. “Right, that’s tonight.”

  “Yeah,” Rachel said, her eyes looking sad. “Those poor kids. Their parents must be at their wits end.”

  “Yeah,” the sheriff said. “Well…”

  “That’s why I was in such a hurry. I’ve got so much food to prepare for the crowd,” she said. “Please, Ansel, don’t give me another ticket. I promise I won’t do it again.” Rachel gave him a coy little look.

  Sheriff Cord smiled his best Magnum P.I. smile, then patted her arm and said, “Well, alright, Rachel. But if I have to stop you again I’m gonna pull your license. I mean it this time.”

  Sheriff Cord had pulled Rachel over countless times. The woman had a lead foot, but Sheriff Cord let her slide most of the time because he thought maybe, just maybe, if he was nice to her she might want to have a drink sometime... He had never asked her, but each time he stopped her he had become a little more familiar. He intended to let his hand linger on her arm, but pulled away instinctively when he noticed her skin was colder than ice.

  “Thank you, Ansel,” Rachel said, in her little-girl voice. “You’re such a sweetie.”

  “Alrightie, then,” the sheriff said, for lack of anything else to say. “You drive safe now, hon.”

  “Yes sir,” she replied, and watched as Sheriff Cord turned from her window and walked back to his patrol car. “Half-wit,” she muttered under her breath.

  She started her car and drove off, reaching back for another piece of fried food in the bucket behind her. She bit down on it and her long, sharp teeth extended and crunched down on something as hard as a rock. She cursed and spit the food into her hand as she drove. If she had looked more carefully at the food in her hand she would have seen something shiny—something silver, with a cheap gemstone embedded in it. But Rachel was in a hurry, so she just flung the mouthful of food out the window by the side of the road, just as she passed the high school. The mouthful of greasy food landed right by the high school’s sign, which bore a picture of the school’s mascot—a griffin.

  Rachel watched her rearview mirror, and as soon as she was out of the sheriff’s sight, she pushed the gas pedal down to the floor and sped off, in a hurry to get home. The hunger was coming on strong now, stronger than ever.

  So much to do, so much to do…

  CHAPTER NINE

  The Weirdest Will In The World

  The blade of the ornate dagger was razor sharp, and it sliced through the blood-red wax seal easily. I watched as lawyer Smith slid the velvet belt off of the leather-bound will, then opened it to the first page. Smith cleared his throat, preparing to read aloud, then stopped, his brow wrinkled.

  “This is odd,” Smith said. “Is this…Russian?”

  He turned to will toward me, across the table, and I looked at the writing. It looked like another language, but after staring at it for a moment, I realized it wasn’t.

  “It’s English,” I said. “Written backwards.”

  “Hm,” Smith said. He turned the book back to look at it. “So it is,” he said. He turned a few pages—all of them filled with the same small, neat, old-fashioned handwriting, all of it backwards.

  “Good lord,” the lawyer said. “How on earth are we going to…” he trailed off, staring at the occasional sketch of a strange creature or some other oddity that cropped up as he flipped through the huge document.

  “How on earth are we going to read this?” he said.

  “With a mirror,” I said, remembering I had read somewhere that Leonardo Da Vinci had written his journals backwards so no one could steal his ideas. He had used a mirror to write them, then used a mirror to read them back.

  “There must be a mirror that my great-uncle used, somewhere,” I said. I got up from the table and started looking around. I looked through an antique hutch, then went to a pantry and opened it. Inside were more strange objects: a row of daggers, with fancy carved handles, an oil lamp, a pair of some kind of animal horns, and, hanging at the back of the pantry, a large, golden axe.

  Smith leaned around me to look inside the pantry. His eyebrows raised, but he didn’t say anything. I looked down, near Smith, and there on the floor, under the table, was a hand mirror, right at Smith’s feet. I kneeled down and picked it up. It was heavy, with a fancy silver frame, and a single crack right down the middle of the mirror itself. I stood up and handed the mirror to Smith, who was getting more confused by the second.

  “Curiouser and curiouser,” he said, trying to be funny, I guess, but he hesitated before taking the cracked mirror and holding it awkwardly over the first page of the will to start reading. I sat down across from him and he cleared his throat and began to read in a slow, halting way, moving the mirror line by line as he read out loud:

  “I, Eustace Wilhelm Grimm, being of sound mind, leave the entirety of my estate to my one remaining descendent, my beloved great-nephew Jacob,” Smith read. He glanced up at me as that first line started to sink in.

  “The entirety of the estate.” All of this…this crazy house, these strange objects…these things were all mine now?

  Smith continued reading: “…and, in accordance with the Grimm family’s grave responsibilities and special gifts, do herewith instruct Master Jacob to complete the reading of the will and the Initiation of the Huntsman, to transfer these powers to his hands, specifically the sacred powers to stop the inhuman creatures of Woodland and their destruction, mayhem, and death…”

  Smith paused, glancing up at me to see how I was handling all of this.

  I can tell you I was not handling it well. Neither was Smith, as far as I could see.

  He continued reading: “…these gifts, along with the knowledge within this document, will enable Master Jacob to carry on as the Huntsman of Woodland, keeping watch over all of its inhabitants, including but not limited to, humans, witches, giants…trolls…eye-pecking ravens…” Smith trailed off, then stopped reading out loud. He read on in silence for a moment, then he put the mirror down.

  “Um,” he said. Then he looked at me. By this time I was completely freaking out, of course, but before I could say anything, Smith cleared his throat again, and said what I was already thinking.

  “I’m a tax attorney, son, so I am not familiar with the finer points of probate law, but it appears that your great uncle Eustace was, ah, not what you would call, ah…”

  “…Of sound mind?” I said.

  “Yes!” he said, too loudly, relieved that he didn’t have to inform me that my great uncle Eustace had apparently been crazier than a craphouse bat.

  I reached for the will and the mirror, then turned the heavy document around and thumbed through it, reading page headings at random:

  Instructions On Burning The Malefic.

  How To Recognize The Shape-Shifted Ogrenon.

  Mating Habits Of The Wood Nymph.

  On Destroying The Ninth Life Of The Deadly Familiar.

  I stopped reading and looked up at Smith. We stared at each other for what seemed like ten minutes of awkward silence across the big table.

  “I’m out of my depth here, son.” he said. “I’d take the will back to my firm in Portland and have one of the probate guys look at it, but my instructions are that the will never leave your possession once you’ve broken the seal. Not sure what to do, here…”

  I waited as he shuffled through some more papers. He read through some of his papers, rubbing his chin, lost in thought.

  “I suppose I could get one of the probate attorneys to come here, unless you come back to Portland with me. We’ll have to get in touch with your folks, either way,” he said. “Since you’re a minor and this is…an unusual situation, to say the least.”

  “I don’t have any parents,” I said.

  “Your le
gal guardians, I mean,” Smith said.

  “I don’t have any,” I said. “I ran away from home.”

  “You…ran…away…from home,” Smith repeated, blinking at me again. He was not only out of his depth, he was completely underwater now, drowning in weirdness and confusion. My explanation that I had run away seemed to drain him of any energy he had left, and he kind of collapsed in on himself and sagged in his neat, conservative suit like a day-old birthday balloon with a slow leak. I felt sorry for him.

  “I’m on my own,” I said.

  Smith stared at me and his shoulders slumped even more. He started rubbing his forehead.

  “Well, then…this—this is a pickle,” he said. “Son, you’re a minor, you have to have legal guardians.”

  “Why?”

  “Why?” he said. He started to say something, but he didn’t seem to have a good answer. “I’ll have to go over that with one of the firm’s family law people.”

  “Okay,” I said.

  “How do you…where do you live?” he asked me.

  I shrugged and looked around the house. “Here, I guess. For now, anyway,” I said.

  Smith opened his mouth to say something, then closed it. We sat there for another long moment, in silence. Smith’s eyes moved back and forth as he rolled the problem around in his head. He was totally lost.

  “I’m a tax attorney,” he finally said, with a helpless little shrug, his voice going high and squeaky.

  “You said that,” I said.

  “I came here to appraise the house,” he said. “I didn’t expect to see you or…have to deal with…” he trailed off again, and thought some more.

  “Wait,” he said, and reached into one of the big briefcases. “There was a note attached to the cover of the will. It came off and I put it…somewhere…”

  Smith rummaged around in the briefcase, then pulled out a small piece of paper that looked like old parchment. He handed it to me. It was written in my great-uncle’s handwriting, but it wasn’t backwards: “Jacob – after reading the will, you must immediately contact Mistress Madeleine at the telephone number below, right away. Do not hesitate.”

  “I don’t suppose you know who this Mistress Madeleine is,” Smith said.

  “Nope,” I said.

  “Well, whoever it is may have some answers for us. Why don’t you give her a call,” he said. “I tried to call her myself, but my cell doesn’t seem to work here. I was looking around for a phone when you arrived.” Smith glanced out the window. It was getting dark out. He looked at his watch.

  “I have to drive to Medford to catch the redeye back to Portland tonight,” he said. “I can drive you into town, and there’s a pay phone near the square. You could call this…Mistress Madeleine and maybe we can at least get you squared away for the night, if she’s, ah…helpful.” Smith got up from the table and picked up a yellow pad.

  “I have to finish an appraisal of the property,” he said. “We’ll head out in an hour or so?”

  “Okay,” I said.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Mistress Madeleine And The Severed Hand

  Madeleine O’Hara hurried past the road flares that led to the small crime scene in front of Woodland High School. Madeleine was fifteen but people often assumed she was older—she had long, strawberry blonde hair that coiled around her face, unless she had it pulled back in a ponytail, as she did now. She was wearing a Woodland High sweatshirt, jeans, and she had a large, bulging backpack over her shoulder. The main reason people often assumed Madeleine was older was not so much because of her looks, it was because she was very smart, very hard-headed, and very opinionated. You didn’t want to get into an argument with Madeleine, even if you were an adult, and very smart yourself. Madeleine would never bother to argue unless she knew she was right. And she was almost always right. Almost.

  Since Eustace’s death, Madeleine had been through hell. Of course she missed him, and cried terribly when she first got the news from her mother, Jenna. Her mother was a nurse at Woodland Hospital, and she often did double-duty as an EMT. It was Jenna who had found Eustace, dead of heart failure, on his dining room floor on that terrible morning. And it was Madeleine who had called the hospital to tell her mother she should check on Eustace on that wretched, hateful day. All morning at school, Madeleine had felt a sickening kind of dread. Eustace hadn’t answered the door when Madeleine had stopped by the house before school, as she always did. A good apprentice is reliable, prompt, and thorough. Eustace had taught her well, and treated her like she was his own child, or grandchild. Madeleine’s father had died when she was very small, and Jenna relied on Eustace, who lived close by, to help raise Madeleine, her only child. But Jenna had no idea her daughter was being groomed as an apprentice. Jenna would have completely freaked out if she had any idea the kind of danger Eustace had allowed Madeleine to face. Jenna wouldn’t have understood how well Eustace had prepared her daughter.

  Madeleine had learned so much from Eustace…and now he was gone. And, just as Eustace had predicted, there was already trouble. Terrible things were already starting to happen, and Master Jacob had not come to Woodland, as Eustace had promised. This was extremely bad. Madeleine’s worst fear was that Jacob would never come, and she would be left alone to deal with the horrors that would soon overwhelm the town; she would be left alone, the entire town vulnerable, without a Huntsman.

  Madeleine picked up the pace, hurrying to the crime scene, where her mother Jenna and Sheriff Cord were kneeling and shining flashlights over something on the ground, right next to the Woodland High sign with the picture of the griffin mascot.

  It’s already happening, Madeleine thought to herself. The Peyton twins, and God knows what else…

  Jenna looked up as Madeleine approached.

  “Maddie, stay back,” Jenna said to her daughter.

  Madeleine ignored her mother’s admonition and came up to see, in the glare from the flashlights, a small clump of something on the ground. Sheriff Cord moved the clump with the tip of a pencil, and Madeleine saw the stark white, slender bone, with something silver on it.

  Jenna and Sheriff Cord spoke in low tones, but Madeleine heard most of it:

  “Radiocarpal joint—wrist bone,” Jenna said, as she examined the clump. “The radius is intact, but severed a couple of centimeters up. And they haven’t been out here long…”

  “Could an animal have done this?” Sheriff Cord asked.

  “I’ve seen hundreds of animal bites and there’s nothing around here that would leave bite marks like these,” Jenna said, shaking her head. “Too powerful. Too…sharp. See how clean the breaks are?”

  “Bag it, tag it, and send it to the M.E. in Medford,” the sheriff said.

  Madeleine looked closer as Jenna picked up the clump carefully with a pair of forceps. And when Madeleine saw what was in the forceps, her breath caught in her throat.

  It was a hand—or what was left of it. Madeleine saw four bones—fingers—and on the third finger was a silver ring with a sapphire blue birthstone.

  A Woodland High class ring. A ring that Madeleine knew had belonged to Greg Peyton.

  Madeleine pushed back her emotions, the way Eustace had taught her, and took out her phone and snapped a couple of pictures of the bones before her mother saw what she was doing.

  “Maddie, go home,” Jenna said, in a harsh tone she rarely used.

  “It’s Greg Peyton, isn’t it?” Madeleine said.

  “GO HOME,” Jenna said, blocking Madeleine’s view of the bones.

  There was no use arguing. That was another thing Eustace had taught Madeleine. Never argue about the Otherworld, never try to convince people, never attempt to recruit people to the fight—they will wind up fighting you.

  Madeleine turned away, but she didn’t leave. She looked down at the picture on her phone. A tear dropped onto the phone’s illuminated screen, and Madeleine quickly brushed it away. Emotion is a luxury you cannot afford in the midst of battle, Eustace had told her many ti
mes. Plenty of time to feel things later; more time than you know, Maddie, believe me. Plenty of time for grief, regret, doubt, and all of the things human beings go through when faced with the Unspeakable. Those feelings have their place; they’re natural and unavoidable. But you cannot indulge those feelings when in battle. They will weaken you and destroy you if you let them.

  Those words had kept Madeleine alive and effective against the terrors she had faced and felt, but now everything was different. Eustace was gone, and Madeleine had never felt more alone, or more afraid, in her life. She fought to keep the tears and her terror at bay.

  The screen on her phone suddenly blinked with a caller ID that said PAY PHONE, and the phone in her hand chimed.

  Who would be calling me from a pay phone? Madeleine wondered as she put the phone to her ear.

  “Hello?” she said.

  “Hello, is this…Mistress Madeleine?”

  It was a young man’s voice, and Madeleine knew right away who it was.

  “Jacob,” she said, overcome with relief.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  I Meet Madeleine And She Is A Total Nutjob

  “Jacob,” the girl’s voice said again, over the phone to me. “It’s you, isn’t it?”

  “Yeah,” I said. “I’m Jacob—Jake—Grimm.” I wasn’t used yet to being called my real name.

  “I’m so glad—” she said. “Yes, yes, I’m Madeleine. Where are you?”

  Whoever “Mistress Madeleine” was, she sounded very strange, but very happy to hear from me.

  “I’m at a phone booth, by the square.” I said, looking out at lawyer Smith though the glass door of the phone booth. Smith was sitting in his rental car, drumming his fingers on the steering wheel and looking at his watch.

  “Good,” Madeleine said. “You’re not far from me. I’m at the school. You have to come to me right away.”

  “Why?” I said. “I don’t mean to be rude, but who are you? What’s going on?”

  “I’ll explain when I see you,” she said. “Please hurry. There’s no time.”

  “You’re at the school?” I said.